I spent five years at Forbes writing about business and leadership, attracting nearly one million unique visitors to Forbes.com each month. While here, I assistant edited the annual World’s 100 Most Powerful Women package and helped launch and grow ForbesWoman.com. I've appeared on CBS, CNBC, MSNBC and E Entertainment and speak often at conferences and events on women's leadership topics. I graduated summa cum laude from New York University with degrees in journalism and sociology and was honored with a best in business award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) in 2012. My work has appeared in Businessweek, Ladies’ Home Journal, The Aesthete and Acura Style. I live in New York City with my husband and can be found on Twitter @Jenna_Goudreau, Facebook, and Google+.

Back To the Stone Age? New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Bans Working From Home

New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has decreed there will be no more working from home for Yahoo staff. A company memo leaked to the press on Friday announced that Yahoo employees would no longer be permitted to work remotely. The decision seems to be based on a desire for increased productivity and a more connected company culture. It reads in part:

To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.

Hundreds of remote workers were asked to report to the office beginning June 1. If they can’t or don’t want to, too bad. Even occasional flexibility is being discouraged. The memo reads, “For the rest of us who occasionally have to stay home for the cable guy, please use your best judgment in the spirit of collaboration.”

Unsurprisingly, the announcement rankled quite a few Yahoo employees, as well as supporters of workplace flexibility. Flexible work arrangements, from telecommuting to flexible schedules and condensed workweeks, are viewed by many as the way of the future. Flexibility has become an important tool for time-crunched workers, particularly parents, to better juggle work and family responsibilities.

“It’s incredibly disappointing,” says Jennifer Owens, editorial director of Working Mother Media. “It’s a step backwards—a mindset from the days when Yahoo was launched.”

“I respect that Marissa is looking at ways to make [Yahoo's] workforce more productive and engaged in their jobs,” says Sara Sutton Fell, CEO of FlexJobs, a service that helps job seekers find flexible professional positions. “I just don’t agree that casting a blanket of blame on individual telecommuters is the right way to do it–nor is cancelling the whole program in one fell swoop.”

Mayer, 37, took the helm of struggling Yahoo last summer while five months pregnant. The new mom is the youngest CEO and one of only a handful of women CEOs leading Fortune 500 companies. When asked for details about the new policy and the rationale behind it, a Yahoo spokesperson wrote back, “We don’t comment on internal matters.”

Update: A Yahoo spokesperson sent the following statement on Tuesday, “This isn’t a broad industry view on working from home–this is about what’s right for Yahoo, right now.”

Mayer has so far taken a number of steps to turn the company around—revamping the homepage, renovating Yahoo Mail, releasing a new Flickr app and conducting a string of mobile acquisitions. Presumably she believes having all soldiers report for duty onsite will lead to increased performance. However, the idea that traditional face-time results in increased productivity seems little more than management bias.

“A variety of studies show that telecommuting and working from home is associated with higher productivity,” says David Lewin, management professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Analytically, it’s not at all clear this would benefit Yahoo. They could wind up with negative performance effects.”

Additionally, working from home—whether occasionally or full time—typically cuts out an hour or more of wasted commuting time every day, says Lewin. Not to mention, employees are so grateful for the flexibility that they’re often more loyal to the company than the 9-to-5ers. A 2011 study by nonprofit human resources association WorldatWork found that companies with stronger cultures of flexibility experienced lower turnover and increased employee satisfaction, motivation and engagement.

“It comes from fear,” says Owens. “Fear that if I can’t see you, I don’t know what you’re working on. It’s a distrust of your own workforce.”

Some are also speculating that Mayer’s little ultimatum may be a way to trim the fat. If remote workers decide to quit rather than comply, it’s a layoff without the associated costs. However, what could be a clever cost-cutting trick sends a dangerous message to the rest of the business community. Could this be the beginning of the end of telecommuting?

“I don’t believe we’ll see many other companies following suit,” says Amanda Augustine, job search expert for TheLadders, an online job-matching service for professionals. “This decision says more about the type of company (and culture) Mayer is planning to rebuild, and less about the state of telecommuting and flexible work schedules as a whole.”

Of course, some face-time will always be necessary and no one’s arguing that it disappear entirely. David Fagiano, COO of corporate training and consulting company Dale Carnegie Training, agrees with Mayer that some of the best ideas are fostered through casual conversations. However, he also notes that these conversations don’t have to take place in the same room. “With the internet being such a great tool in business today, it’s easy to hold a virtual meeting via Skype or to pick up the phone.”

With increasingly effective mobile and video conferencing technology there’s less and less need to be present in the physical workplace. Certainly, Yahoo could find alternatives to alienating hundreds of workers. Isn’t it a technology company?

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That’s easy for her — after she had her own private nursery built at her office! The rest of us have to live in the real world.

Ironically, Mayer comes from Google, a company famous for its great working environment. But perhaps she understands more than most that Google’s whacky office environment is possible only because of the corporation’s vast ocean of cash. This is in stark contrast to the popular mythology that Google’s success is in some way because of the internal culture and environment — when what happened in reality is the other way around.

Like Google, Yahoo has barely innovated anything for the real world for over a decade. Google is still dining out on the cash from search. But Mayer knows that Yahoo does not have Google’s cash reserves.

“Working from home” can work but it depends on the culture of the company. If there is a culture of high expectations, high performance, then it works. Yahoo has not struggled due to high performance, so it makes sense to curtail the flexibility, and hopefully thin the ranks of marginal performers, until they transform the culture.

Interestingly, this story tells us more about Google than it does about Yahoo. She”s been at Yahoo for five minutes in career terms, but was at Google for a lifetime. Indeed, she’s only ever had experience of one job at one company!

This is clearly a job-cutting exercise, thinly disguised, bearing the hallmarks of cunning and dishonesty as we expect from any hardcore Google employee — whether it be PR, lobbying or tax-dodging. Targeting home workers indicates that Meyer sees these staff as dead wood. This is a perception she must have acquired at Google, not just Yahoo. She knows home working is allowed at Google. Of course, Google can afford to carry dead wood — for the time being at least — thanks to the cash mountain generated by search. Mayer knows .

Would Google have been successful without search? No. The corporation has barely innovated anything for the real world since search over a decade ago and has essentially been dining out on that ever since.

Would Mayer have been successful without Google? No. Google made Mayer.

The best practice is a combined workplace policy where business teams ‘come together’ for strategy sessions and for generating passion for the work they are engaged in on a collaborative project. In the interim, between these weekly office visits, allow the team employees to produce results, prepare for the next office visit, and better manage their work-life challenges from their home offices. This will help create enthusiasm, get work accomplished, lessen stress levels, and keep the energy and passion alive. The business will be rewarded with a better, fully-engaged employee and ultimately positive company results.

I don’t think it is right to open your mouth to judge someone’s decision unless you have walked in their shoes to know where it pinches or have their level of responsibility or success. How many of the people giving scathing or disparaging criticisms have ever managed a Fortune 500 company with over 10,000 employees?

CEOs makes decisions based on facts. If this CEO has gotten facts that points to the fact that employees working remotely are less productive than those working from the office, thereby affecting the overall productivity of the company, she has the sole responsibility of turning around, who are you to judge her?

In my former company, I remember how most employees use to spend almost half of their time in the office either playing around, gossiping, socializing and a lot of other activities not related to their jobs. And they quickly rush to look busy at work at the sight of a senior manager or the CEO. Imagine what these same type of workers would do with their time at home, if they could do this, right in an office environment.

Some companies can do better working with staff that work remotely, others require having their army of workers onsite to be productive. It’s up to the CEO to know what is best for her company and to decide accordingly. Remember, it’s different strokes for different companies.

Agree with her 100%. Creative people may be able to come up with ideas while sitting alone in their home, apartment, or wherever…but creativity in a corporation needs to be contagious. It’s hard to be contagious over the phone or internet. Emotion is best conveyed personnally, not from a distance.

I employ over 300 people in multiple locations. I have folks in IT, customer support, sales, correspondence, admin, HR, etc., My 22 year old, +$10M business is mission critical to our clients and requires that we are open 365 days a year. While I allow some telecommuting / work from home when kids are sick or deliveries are being made, etc., – every single one of our employees has a desk and is required to keep office hours. We are all accountable to each other and in order for that to be taken seriously, we have to know each other. We have to interact. We have to develop relationships. That stuff still matters. Of course, someone in the largely independent, unmonitored work world of higher education or journalism may not understand how culture and collaboration can improve a product or service but, I can tell you firsthand, without a doubt that we are better when we work TOGETHER and the definition of “together” has not changed just so workers can devote equal time to managing their kids hockey team, mixing dubstep beats or making sure they’re up to date on everyone’s Facebook status.

Ms. Mayer has a large company that needs to turn around. The bigger the ship, the slower the turn. That is why Ms. Mayer has declared “All hands on deck.” When the phrase, “All hands check your inbox” or “It’s all for one and one for all on a conference call” becomes part of the winning vernacular, I’ll believe the naysayers on this forum. Until then, Ms. Mayer needs everyone moving in the same direction at the same time. For pete’s sake, her company is paying these people. For anyone to even question whether or not they should go to the workplace is ludicrous.

On another note, there’s a huge movement in some of the industries that my company works in to off-shore. When I read comments like this, I not only understand the move but regretfully, I have to support it. What kind of entitled workforce are we breeding when we complain about being asked to come to work… Is that really an admirable culture??? There are people in other countries who want to take the food off of your family’s table. They’re meeting in real offices in real cities and plotting the demise of your livelihood at this very moment. If you think they’re taking you seriously while you check your e-mail in your jammies or log in from the biscotti cafe, you’re in for a rude awakening.

I hope she is planning to give birth while at work and have that baby with her 8hrs a day! No slacking Marissa, we want face-time with you everyday. Let’s see how your power trip works for workplace morale. I’m moving to MSN, no more “Yahoos” for me.